I have read the story that Twain quote is from. It is out of The Awful German Language. If you ever find it anywhere, read it. It goes on a bit in one part about the illogic of how they use gender.he has a short story in there translated word for word into English. The whole thing is very funny

I am constantly amazed by the new and difficult to translate words that I have stumbled upon since moving to Germany. One that I can think of off the top of my head is schrottreif (pronounced shrot-rife). The dictionary translation is "Ready for the scrap heap". What a useful word!

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